A Paint Chip of Hope
by jeffysquint
Summary: Castle kicks his shoes off and wanders over to her side of the bed, not sure if he's crazy or if something is off. Really, being him, it could be either. When he reaches her he finds her curled around their little Lucy, her graceful hand sweeping across the infant's head of soft down hair.


So pretend the season finale didn't happen, and the job wasn't ever offered to Kate, and then fast forward a few years.

**Disclaimer:** Characters and original storyline property of Andrew Marlowe and ABC. I take no credit other than this short little storyline.

Thanks for reading! Comments and critiques always appreciated.

* * *

Castle saunters into the loft, careful to shut the door quietly behind him. It is late, and while Kate is probably still awake, the baby is most likely down by now. All of the living room lights are off, leaving the room illuminated only by the colors of the city that stream in through his windows. He heads off in the direction of the master bedroom, seeking the her presence. The light in his study is on, but the door to his bedroom is cracked and he sees no light coming from it. Both early-bird and night-owl, Kate is never normally asleep by this time.

Upon entering their room, Castle is able to make out her form on the bed. Lying down on her side, away from him and towards the window, he can just see the way she curls into herself, in an almost fetal manner.

"Kate?" he whispers into the night, trying to access the situation and whether or not she is sleeping.

"Mmm?"

He kicks his shoes off and wanders over to her side of the bed, not sure if he's crazy or if something is off. Really, being him, it could be either.

When he reaches her he finds her curled around their little Lucy, her graceful hand sweeping across the infant's head of soft down hair.

He decides to go for nonchalant until he knows more details, so he sits down on the bed at her knees, and reaches up to stroke their sleepy girl's back.

"Hey baby Luce, how was it spending time with big sis? Hmmm? Did you miss mommy and daddy?"

Kate doesn't speak, nor look up at him, but continues to dreamily stroke her little girl.

"Want me to put her to bed? After that whole debacle with the nurse who told us horror stories about the moms who suffocated their children in their sleep, I don't think we should keep her here. And you like you're about to fall asleep yourself."

He really gets a look at her then, his eyes adjusting in the dark room and he knows he wasn't crazy. She's quiet but she's got that worried look on her face where her brows furrow and half of her lip lies in a prison between her teeth.

Castle shifts and runs a hand through Kate's hair, brushing it back onto the pillow behind her, before drifting his hand down her side. Only then does he notice that she's still in her white button-up top that she left in early this morning, and her dark-wash jeans haven't been removed either.

"You there?"

"I needed her," she whispers. "It was so horrible." Her eyes never leave the baby, and she continues the monotonous caress of Lucy's head, all the while holding the baby to her chest.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know…" She finally glances up to his eyes and upon seeing the panic there, she backtracks. "Oh no hey I'm not hurt, no. I'm fine. Just a long day."

"And Luce?" His eyes scan both of their forms, looking for any indication of injury or pain.

"Castle no she's fine too Alexis did great it's not that. Just… not the best kind of case to come back to."

He sees her face shift then, at only the thin reference to her work and he knows it must have been bad. She takes a calming breath in and traps her lip once more between her teeth, trying to stifle the emotions that have been screaming in the back of her mind the whole day.

"Castle, what did we do?"

"I must admit I'm lost, hon. Catch me up?"

"Not in front of this one." She traces the outline of the tiny ear, so perfect in its softness and so adorable in the way it juts awkwardly from the infant's round head.

He rubs the side of Kate's arm in an encouraging fashion, hoping she's up to sitting, and she straightens and swings her feet of the side of the bed, careful not to rock it too much. She doesn't look at him though, but rather at the ground, as she guides her palms to the side of her head and back into her hair. He gazes worriedly for a few moments, before taking initiative and scooping the now sleeping baby into his arms and walking her over to the bassinet.

"She can sleep here tonight, yeah?" he murmurs to his wife, hoping he is interpreting this correctly.

"Please." Her voice is a little more strained than usual, and he's now sure that he was right, something's wrong.

He comes grabs the baby monitor off of his nightstand, quickly checking to make sure that it is on, and walks back over to Kate, taking her hand and helping to pull her up. She follows him into the office numbly, but she follows nonetheless.

He sits in his desk chair, and motions her into his lap. She doesn't protest, but places herself willingly on his thighs, her legs draped over one arm of the chair and her arms wrapped around his middle. Her nose presses into his chest, and she can still detect a faint wisp of the cologne she got him for his last birthday, before she started to despise all smells during the pregnancy. She's glad she can find comfort in his mix of aromas again, because she thinks she might have missed it more than sleeping on her stomach. There's his cologne, but also a faint hint of aftershave and a little deodorant and then there's just Castle.

She fights back the urge to moan and instead just sits quietly, knowing he will start the conversation for her. Today had only been her second day back to work, and she cannot believe that this was the case that dropped into her lap so soon after coming back from having Lucy. Castle would have been home with Lucy but he had to run out to a meeting with Gina and so Alexis had been put in charge of babysitting until one of the Castle parents got home. She can't be mad at him for not being home when she got back, as he basically put off his writing and Gina for the last 6 months, but she desperately wishes he could have been there to greet her when she entered the loft a few hours ago after leaving work, exhausted and completely run down.

Putting on some kind of façade for Alexis had been almost unbearable, especially when the girl wouldn't stop staring at her suspiciously with eyes that looked just like her father's. Those blinding blue eyes made Kate want to spill out her heart and her day. But Alexis still seemed too young to Kate; a girl so young should never know the horrible secrets of what people in this world did to one another on a daily basis. No one so pure and innocent should ever have to know.

The more she got closer to Castle, the more she felt the need to protect Alexis from their work. But now that Lucy was here, her mothering instincts were on overload, and sometimes she was the one who needed reminding that Alexis was indeed 21, and quite old enough to defend herself.

This all flitted across her mind in the span of a few seconds, before Castle cut through the silence and her thoughts ground to a halt as she was brought back to reality.

"So you want to tell me what happened today?"

Kate took a deep breath in, let it out, and sat up a little straighter to face him as well as she could in their current position.

"We got a call about a body around 10 this morning. Espo kinda looked at me funny and told me he and Ryan could do the scene work if I stayed here and finished some of my old paperwork that was still lying around. He said he'd promise to be back in an hour or two, and that I wouldn't miss a thing."

She runs a hand through the front of her hair then, combing her long remnants of bangs out of her face and into the mass of curls that have fallen out over the day. She takes another deep breath, and another lengthy exhale, but continues in an almost detached manner, her voice steady and her eyes on his.

"I said no, obviously. I mean it was my first case back and it wasn't like it was anything dangerous. CSU was already on their way and Espo didn't say why he thought it would be a good idea. He's just the one who got the call and I figured he was taking advantage of that to act like I wasn't needed. Anyways, I went."

She pauses again, and threads the fingers of her left hand through his right, and he uses his other hand to rub small circles on her back, in what he sincerely hopes is a reassuring manner.

They both stay silent like that for a little while. Kate opens her mouth a few times to speak, but ends up just staring into his eyes.

"What happened then?" he whispers under his breath. He never likes it when something threatens to break his Kate, not only because he knows how big it must be to shake her, but also because he can't stand to see her like this.

"Castle it was a little girl," she rushes out with the exhale of the breath she had been holding. "Couldn't have been more than 4 years old."

Castle sucks in a breath then, and uses the hand he had on her back to get a handle on her waist and pull her to him. But it isn't enough to prepare him for what comes next.

"Beaten to death. We still don't even know who she is. No one in the area recognized her, but that could have been because of the state we found her in. No one reported anyone missing. No one in the neighborhood even cared to take a proper look at the picture we were showing them. We couldn't get anywhere."

"Oh hey. It isn't your fault, you know. You'll go in tomorrow and find something."

"I don't know… even Lanie didn't look hopeful. Gates sent us home because there was basically nothing to do but wait for more information and I didn't even argue. All I wanted was Lucy."

"Kate, hey, look at me. Lucy is fine, okay? She's beautiful and perfect and so very safe."

Kate just shook her head at him. Her lips were just a thin line now, and her whole face was scrunched with the effort of trying not to cry.

"Castle what have we done?" It is the same question she asked him not 10 minutes ago, and yet he still has no idea what she is talking about. She gives him a look more desperate than the last time she asked the question and still, he can't figure out where this is going.

"I must admit you've lost me again."

"Lucy… I mean just go look at her. She's perfect. She doesn't know a thing about this world and we just went and pulled her into it. And, oh God, what were we even thinking bringing something so innocent and perfect into a world where their life is only going to be crushed one day because people are just so damn _mean _Castle. I mean what were we thinking?" She pauses to give him a look, but he's a little overwhelmed and confused by the intensity of her words to say anything just yet, so she continues in the same hurried and panicked manner.

"Why would you ever want to punish someone like that when they could have just been happy I don't know, floating or something up there being a soul or whatever they do or don't do before they're born, I don't know, but she's here now… with a mother who goes out and tries to fight these people and… what the hell were we thinking?"

Tears are streaming down Kate's face by the end of that rant, and it's all Castle can do to just pull her to him and let her cry. He's currently at a loss for words, which doesn't happen that often, but isn't unheard of either.

And so for the next five minutes or so, he lets her sniffle and quietly sob into his dress shirt, while he does his best to not let more than a few tears leak from his eyes.

When she seems to have quieted a bit, he reaches around to cup her face and bring her eyes to his, hoping that in the mean time he'll find the right words to say.

"If we're being honest I don't know what we were thinking."

She gapes at him but he presses a finger to her lips.

"Let me finish. If we're being honest, Lucy was probably brought into this world for our own selfish benefit, because quite frankly, she had nothing to do with it. But listen to me. In all this world of hate and revenge and jealousy and _meanness,_" he adds to use her word, before pausing to get his point across and his thoughts together, "in this world of meanness we have to find hope and joy and happiness in the places we can. We can't wait for them to come to us all of the time, because often then they never would. And so we go looking for it. And if we're being honest, what could possibly bring more joy and more hope and more happiness to the world than a brand new life, grown from scratch. A brand new life that symbolizes and at the same time _is_ the next generation of this world. And yeah, maybe one day that beautiful innocent body of hope will get hurt, and a paint chip of hope will be replaced with a tile of the real world. But what would this world be if we didn't have better things to hope for? Better things to live for? Then we'd all be in that place of revenge and jealousy, and the world would end quicker than you could ever imagine. So what we did, Kate, creating Lucy, wasn't careless. No, it was hopeful. It was beautiful. And it was downright magical."

God dammit, this man. He's always getting her to cry all over the place. The tears are positively streaming at his words. Her body no longer wracks with guilt, and she tries to find words to tell him what his words mean to her. Because of course he's right. Of course she overreacted.

"And she is _so _lucky to have a mom like you who is willing to stand up against the evil and protect her from it."

It is really too much. His words, his compliments. And she feels like a horrible person for ever doubting her own kid's life.

"I didn't mean I didn't want…"

"I know Kate. I know you love her."

"I could never regret _her_, I just…"

"Hey, look at me." He scoops her chin up in a finger and redirects her to face him once more. "I understand. And you're not crazy to feel this way and I can't promise you that this feeling will ever properly subside because I know I still get it with Alexis. But we do what we can to protect her, and we work on everything else. Yeah?"

"Yeah, okay." She glares at him, but only a little, to let him know that she knows he's right. And she doesn't need to say it, because the small smirk he gives her is enough to confirm that he knows exactly what she's thinking, and he's proud of being right every once and a while. "She's just so perfect, you know?"

"She is perfect, wanna know why?"

She lifts her eyebrows at him and he can't help the smile that overwhelms his face as he speaks again.

"Because she's half you," he says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.

She slaps his chest and scoffs. "She's half you though. And you made Alexis and she's great so… that's saying something."

"You blame me for her perfection? Well okay. I can handle that."

She slaps him across the chest again and he just chuckles at her. They shuffle in the chair to hold one another again, and the mood seems to shift again.

"I just want to hold her. It's the only way I can really feel like she's safe."

"Me too. But she's sleeping now. We should try to get some rest before she wakes again. It's pajama time for mommy and daddy."

She raises an eyebrow at him and he's happy to see the beginnings of a smile, before she lets go and giggles a little. Her giggle is one of his favorite sounds.

"I'm exhausted. But oh, why can't I hold her. I'm sure I could get her up without waking her!" The earnest look she's giving him could break his heart.

"You said that two nights ago, and she woke up and wouldn't stop crying for two hours straight."

"Oh, don't exaggerate big boy. She was already awake when I picked her up."

He scoffs in response. "You know that's a lie. She'll be there in approximately an hour and a half when she needs to be fed according to my watch."

"Oh what your watch has special powers to detect her hunger now? _Right. _I'm pretty sure that's my job."

It's at the very end of that last word of Kate's that they hear a small cry come from the closed door behind them.

"Hah!" Kate exclaims.

"That can't be right, we must have woken her or something."

"Does it matter? She's up and I win." Kate bounces out of his lap and nearly jogs into the bedroom.

Castle groans from his chair, but can't help longing to do the same as he hears Kate's voice coo at their little Lucy from the other room.

"Hey Luce whatchya doin up huh? You hungry?" Kate makes quick work of her jeans and opens the top few buttons of her shirt before scooping the little girl into her arms and heading over to the rocking chair in the corner with the burping cloth that lay over the side of the bassinet.

By the time Castle enters the room, Kate has Lucy attached to her breast and sucking softly. Kate's face is solemn once more, but more peaceful than before, and he knows she hasn't been able to push the image of the little girl they found in that alleyway today out of her mind yet. Nor should she. If anyone is going to fight for that unknown little girl, he'd want it to be her. There's no way she's going to let go until she finds justice. He can see it in the way she's staring at their own child.

He thought about asking her to stop so many times while she was pregnant with Lucy. Find a safer job, go into IA, something, but he never found the courage. Then one day he realized what a disservice he'd be doing to the rest of New York City, and he just couldn't do it. How could he be so selfish to tear this majestic beast of a woman away from the multitudes of people that she had the power to help? In the end, he couldn't. And it would probably scare him every day she went out into the field, but he would never ask her to stop.

He hopes one day she'll come to the realization on her own, and she won't turn out like her mother, murdered and lying dead in an alleyway while him and Lucy wait for her to come home to have dinner with them. He knows he'll feel better once he's able to go out into the field with her again.

For now he'll have to just hold his family close and do the best he can to protect the three of them.

His eyes won't stop staring at the sight of his wife and his baby girl, and Kate soon feels the intensity of his gaze, and looks up to meet his eyes. She sees turmoil in them, and wishes she didn't feel like the cause of it. She motions with her head to get him to come closer, and he shuffles embarrassedly over to the rocking chair.

"Here I'll get up and you sit down and then I'll sit in your lap and we'll all be smushed in there together."

He nods dumbly and waits for her to stand, but then feels a rush of guilt when Kate stands and Lucy whimpers at the lost off contact. Poor kid has no idea what's going on.

He calms once more after the three of them settle in to the old wooden chair, Kate on his lap with her head rested in his neck and Lucy in her arms, quietly enjoying a midnight snack. He calms because right now they're together and healthy and perfect and he never wants it any other way.

"I'm sorry for bringing you worry," Kate whispers into Castle's neck, before placing a soft kiss just beneath his jaw line.

"Just solve the case for that poor little girl, yeah?"

"I will."

He nods and brings his hand up and underneath the one of hers that is cradling Lucy's head. He places a kiss to the hairline of Kate's head, and takes a moment to breathe in the scent of his wife.

"Love you," he mumbles into her hairline, lips ghosting over her forehead.

"Love you too Rick."

They don't say much else that night. Lucy goes down without a fuss and then they change and crawl into bed. They pepper each other with soft kisses before drifting off together. And only in sleep can the family truly find peace, and for now that has to be enough.


End file.
